1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication systems and methods, and more particularly, to an application programming interface (API) for a receiver in a wireless communication device.
2. Background
Forward Link Only (FLO) is a digital wireless technology that has been developed by an industry-led group of wireless providers. FLO technology uses advances in coding and interleaving to achieve high-quality reception, both for real-time content streaming and other data services. FLO technology can provide robust mobile performance and high capacity without compromising power consumption. The technology also reduces the network cost of delivering multimedia content by dramatically decreasing the number of transmitters needed to be deployed. In addition, FLO technology-based multimedia multicasting compliments wireless operators' cellular network data and voice services, delivering content to the same cellular mobile terminals used in 3G networks.
Today, FLO technology is used to create and broadcast real time multimedia content across various networks to a large number of mobile subscribers. These mobile subscribers generally employ a FLO receiver, which can be described conceptually with a reference model comprising a number of processing layers, typically referred to as a “protocol stack”. Each processing layer includes one or more entities that perform specific functions.
An attractive feature of the protocol stack employed by the FLO receiver is that each layer is self-contained so that the functions performed by one layer can be performed independently of the functions performed by the other layers. This allows improvements to be made to the FLO receiver for one layer without adversely affecting the other layers. However, various challenges are posed when designing the interface between layers in the FLO receiver. Efficient communications across layers in terms of efficient reception of multicast services is always an objective the FLO receiver designer.